What It Means To Be A Hero
School is where you learn.
“Swoosh!” Rainbow Dash yelled as she zoomed through the sky. She really didn’t need to make sound effects with her mouth. Even at age 7 she was flying fast enough to make a noise, but nopony was looking, so why not? Sound effects made everything cooler, by like… twenty percent, or something.
That was a fifth cooler, she remembered from math class, or whatever, that stuff was for eggheads. She was too cool for thinking about numbers. Especially now when she was on a break.
She soared up towards a small tuft of clouds above the schoolyard, only one goal on her mind, to buck the stuffing out of them.
“Pow!” She yelled as she kicked the first cloud, causing it to dissolve.
“Hey! Ha, Sho, Boom! HIYA!” She yelled as she kicked, bucked and pounded the rest of the cloudlets into submission, not caring where the moisture went. She just wanted to pummel some clouds. Well not clouds;, in her mind they were dragons, or changelings, evil pegasi, whatever, she was dreaming about being a darned hero.
“Rainbow Dash, the hero!” She looked around to make sure nopony had overheard her little outburst, some of her classmates teased her for wanting to be a hero. Well, what did those foals know about heroism? Rainbow Dash knew she was going to achieve great things, her parents told her so, all the time. They cheered her on when she did something good, picked her up when she did something bad. Held her when she was sad and laughed with her when she was glad. She wanted to be just like them when she grew up.
They were just like the best parents ever. When her mother read her bedtime stories she always named the hero Rainbow. Every night she went to bed she heard stories about herself saving princesses and fighting monsters, how could that not happen later when she grew up? Her dad said she would be in the Wonderbolts one day, and she really, really wanted that. They were sooo coooool!!!!
Coming up to another cloud, this one larger, she imagined it being a huge fire-breathing dragon. It roared at her, a small pegasus filly having the galls to challenge Torch The Dragonlord. Well, whatever, he’d learn.
She made a barrel roll, a new move her dad had taught her, and avoided the imaginary flames that Torch the completely normal cloud spat at her. The fiery death of a light breeze just missed her as she zoomed up and kicked the dragon in the head.
“Poof!” She knocked away that part of the cloud, making it vanish in a puff of rain that quickly fell out of sight.
Reveling in her triumph she didn’t notice that the kick had sent the cloud spinning and a tendril was rapidly moving toward her, not until it was too late.
“Oof!” She huffed out as the dragon’s tail slammed into her and sent her spinning through the air! But like the skilled flier she was, she quickly righted herself and flew back up to face him. Before she launched her next attack she paused to run a hoof over her side, it was a bit sore, but nothing a tough filly like her couldn’t fight through.
“Hah! So you still got some fight in you, Torch!” She yelled at the slowly spinning cloud, easily dodging another tendril of the soft white fluff. “Well, let’s go for round two you big meanie!”
She was just about to lay into the enraged dragon as the school bell rang, breaking the young filly out of her fantasy.
“Awwww!” She groaned, before pointing a hoof and scowling at the cloud.
“You got lucky this time, dragonwimp, but I will be back after history class.”
With that she left the battlefield and zoomed down to the schoolyard, a sprawling structure at the very end of Cloudsdale. She hated it there, classes were boring and for eggheads. Like snore, but her parents said she needed to ace all her classes if she wanted to be a Wonderbolt, so she did her best. Besides, she got cake every time she brought home an A on a test. To be fair, she got cake even the time she brought home a C-, but she could tell her parents were just that little bit less happy that time, so she studied hard to not have to disappoint them again.
Besides, and she really hated to admit this, but classes weren’t the real reason she hated school. They were boring, sure, but manageable. What she really didn’t like was that school made her feel small. It was full of older ponies and colts bigger than her, filles too. She was small, she knew that, but knowing that she couldn’t stand up to the oldest fillies and colts were, well not a good feeling. She wanted, no, needed to be the best, and she wasn’t. Not for several years at least.
She was tempted to just fly home and blow off school for the rest of the day but, well that would be giving up, and heroes never gave up. If she wanted to become a hero then she couldn’t be afraid of anything, not even a history test!
She was diving toward the school grounds to face it’s horrors when her bold charge was interrupted by a shrill yell.
“Please!”
The shout from below reminded her that while she felt weak, she was still the toughest of her year. Some ponies were not that lucky.
Rainbow knew she should ignore it, she would get into trouble if she was late to class. She would get into even more trouble if she got into another fight too. It wasn’t her problem if some ponies got bullied, they needed to learn how to become tough, like her.
But that wasn’t… well what felt right.
Rainbow swore under her breath and zoomed over to take stock of the situation.
What met her was so predictable it wasn’t even sad. A lanky yellow pegasus was being pushed around by three colts. Rainbow didn’t know why she wouldn’t fight back, there were only three of them, and she was like a year older than them too. It was kinda disgusting.
Why couldn’t Fluttershy just learn to stand up for herself? Why was it always Rainbow’s job to defend her?
She should fly away and leave the older filly to learn for herself. She should be a good filly and get to class on time. She should… probably do something, again.
Why was it always her though? Why couldn’t any of the teachers do something, they were really big and could give the bullies detention, and worse. This really shouldn’t concern her, so why did it?
She made another pass over the scene as she struggled with the dilemma. This time however she couldn’t help but notice that all three of the bullies were soaked. They were sopping wet and very angry about the fact, and taking their anger out on the easiest victim, which of course was Fluttershy.
Rainbow felt a pang of guilt in the pit of her stomach as she realized that it was probably her fault. She hadn’t paid any attention to where the drops would fall when she kicked those clouds. Apparently the rain had soaked those three morons and them being to stupid to look up decided to take it out on somepoy else. She could hear them yell at Fluttershy. The idea that she of all ponies would pull a prank like that was preposterous!
The guilt really wasn’t helping her. One one side, it made her want to just fly off and hide, but on the other it made her feel… responsible? It was an odd feeling, but she couldn’t just let this happen, it was her fault Fluttershy was being bullied. Well really, it was the bullies fault, they were the ones who couldn’t handle a little rain, and it was kinda Fluttershy’s fault too for making it so easy.
She was leaning toward flyin off, nopony could say she did wrong since it didn’t involve her. She should be a good filly and fly off to class even if that meant leaving Fluttershy to her tormentors. It happened every day, whether Rainbow was there to see it or not, so it wasn’t her problem. If it wasn’t her careless rain, then the bullies would just find some other reason to be mean to the shy filly.
It wasn’t her problem.
But it was wasn’t it? This time they had done it while she saw it, and there was something she could do about it.
Maybe this was part of being a hero too? Having to step up when nopony else would. She let that thought echo in her head and felt a familiar surge. Her guild started to be replaced by another feeling, anger.
It wasn’t her problem, but she’d make it her problem.
As one of the colts showed Fluttershy, causing her to drop her books, Rainbow’s mind was made up. She dove towards the scene below her.
“Hey butterwings! Why don’t you pick your books up!” One bully yelled at the cowering pegasus.
Another reached down, grabbed a wingful of notepaper and started to dry his mane with them, ignoring the protests of the filly that she needed them for class. He sneered at the yellow pony, and then...
“Swoosh!”
Suddenly there was a small blue filly standing between the bullies and the quivering Fluttershy. The colts quickly overcame the surprise and glared at her.
“Stay out of this, runt!” One yelled.
“Uhm, did she just say ‘swoosh’ as she landed?” The second muttered, causing her to burr up her feathers in anger and embarrassment. She couldn’t stand for that, she was a hero!
“So, you buckers want to take on a pony your own size!?” The little filly shouted back, her voice surprisingly strong.
The three colts looked at each other, was this really happening? There were three of them, and they were colts, and she was small. How did she possibly expect this to go?
***
“All three, beaten.” A very smug filly boasted as the school nurse patched her up.
The nurse just sighed and kept on wrapping gauze around Rainbow’s hoof. Apparently it had been sprained or something. It didn’t matter, Rainbow would wear the white cloth like a medal. She had finally done something, and it had gone awesome.
“I beat all three of them.” She repeated, but the nurse just shushed her and finished up her bandage and went over to check on her wing. Whatever, she’d come around.
“I’m a hero.” Rainbow repeated out loud and tried not to wince in pain as the nurse readjusted some of her feathers that had been bent out of place.
“You’re a foal.” The nurse replied. “Taking on three older colts like that, I have no words. What were you thinking?”
That caught Rainbow off guard. “Uhm, I wasn’t thinking. I just saw them push Fluttershy, and it all turned kinda… red, you know.”
“Red?” The nurse dismissed and tried to put as much reproach as she could into her next sentence.. “You should know that fighting in the schoolyard is bad.”
To her surprise the little filly just rolled her eyes. “Well duh!”
That caught the nurse off guard. “Then why-?” She began, but Rainbow cut her off.
“Because nopony else would.” She said simply. “Fluttershy was getting bullied, again.” She met the nurse’s frown with one of her own, managing to pack quite a large portion of reproach herself into that last word.
The nurse couldn’t take that kind of rebelliousness, her frown grew less friendly.
“It is not your job to stop bullying. We are aware of the situation and have spoken to the colt’s parents.”
Rainbow just snorted and crossed her arms. “That’s what you always say, but while you talk, Fluttershy is still getting bullied every day.” She puffed up her wings. “But not today, today they won’t mess with her, because of me.”
“I’ll write to your parents about this.” The nurse threatened, but it fell on flat ears as Rainbow was starting to feel fed up about this. She rose to her hooves
“Yeah, you do that.” She replied, knowing full well that her parents wouldn’t punish her at all. In fact, if she told the story right, she might impress them enough to earn herself some ice cream.
Rainbow smiled as she left the nurses flustered whining behind her and stepped through the door to the rest of the school. It suddenly didn’t feel nearly as uncomfortable as it used to.
“One day, I am going to save Equestria.” The little filly said to herself, ignoring the looks of the older foals at her ridiculous announcement. Rainbow didn’t care, she just strode off to class. Her little fight and the trip to the nurse afterwards meant she was probably too late to take the test, but she’d ask the teacher if she could take it another day.
Because that too, is what heroes did.
Author's Note
This was my entry into the Quills and Sofas ‘Mind of a child’ speedwriting contest.
I thank everyone who participated for the comments and editing help.
